He spared Gordon Brown, then chancellor, and John Reid, defense secretary, but said such able ministers tended to be the exception and “stood out like Maasai warriors in a crowd of pygmies”. Among those he was scathing about were then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, another Defense Secretary, Geoff Hoon, and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. He mocked Blair’s Middle East envoy, Lord Levy, for claiming to be a “latter-day Kissinger”. Labor saw him as an unfair target of party officials and suspected him of being a conservative. Prescott dismissed Meyer as a “redsock,” a reference to the otherwise conventionally attired Meyer’s penchant for bold socks. Meyer defended himself by saying that politicians could write books about their time in office, so he did not see why diplomats could not do the same, and noted that the Cabinet Office had given approval for publication. He said he would give the book’s serialization rights to charities, but would retain the rights. He was ambassador to Washington from 1997 to 2003, which coincided with the Clinton and Bush administrations. Relations between Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were good and this helped Meyer establish his presence in Washington. But he was realistic about the UK’s importance to the US and banned the use of the phrase “special relationship” around the embassy, ​​telling staff that Britain was far less important than a number of other countries. The Blair government had hoped that Clinton would be succeeded as president by Democrat Al Gore, but Meyer warned them early on that George W. Bush had a good chance of winning the 2000 election. Christopher Meyer presents a bust of Winston Churchill to US President George W. Bush in the Oval Office, 2001. Photo: Greg Mathieson/Mai/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, ordered Mayer in 2001 to get close to the Bush administration: “We want you to get up in the White House and stay there.” Meyer duly complied, establishing good contacts not only with Bush but also with those close to him, including then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, with whom Meyer played tennis, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was his next-door neighbor, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, with whom they went white-water rafting. Meyer supported the Iraq war, but argued to DC Confidential that Blair could have been more forceful in negotiations with Bush and could have persuaded him to delay the invasion to secure a second UN resolution. He was also critical of the US for its lack of post-invasion planning. Mayer’s critics cited Rumsfeld as saying the US would have gone ahead with the invasion without the UK if Blair had threatened not to join. In 2009, giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry led by Sir John Chilcot, Meyer reiterated the case, saying that Blair had become so close to Bush that he effectively gave the US president a blank check for the invasion. Some of Mayer’s animosity towards the Blair government appears to have been because he felt at times cut out of the loop, with Blair having a direct relationship with Bush. Meyer was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. His father, Reginald, was in the RAF during WWII and was killed in action in Greece in 1944, 13 days before his son was born. Christopher was raised by his mother, Eva, and a grandmother before being sent to boarding school at Lancing College in West Sussex, which he later said he hated for the first three years but admitted made him self-sufficient. He studied in Paris before going to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated with a degree in history. He continued his studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy. Christopher Meyer, left, and US Chief of Protocol Donald Ensenat, right, greet UK Prime Minister Tony Blair upon his arrival in the US in 2002 for a meeting with President George W Bush at Camp David. Photo: Susan Walsh/AP In 1966 he joined the Foreign Office and, having studied Russian, went to Moscow for his first posting before serving in Madrid, Brussels and then another stint in Moscow. He was selected in 1994 to become the Major’s press officer. It was a difficult period, with the Conservatives beset by a series of scandals and the prime minister regularly ridiculed. Major was particularly sensitive to press criticism, but Meyer failed to persuade him either to stop reading the papers or to stop taking criticism so personally. Meyer’s dry sense of humor helped him through many awkward briefings in the lobby. He was rewarded for his efforts as press secretary in 1997 with an embassy in Germany before moving later that year to Washington. A year later, he was knighted. Immediately after returning from Washington he became chairman of the UK’s Press Complaints Commission, serving from 2003 to 2009. During his tenure he avoided tackling many difficult issues, such as phone hacking, which he said , was outside his remit. After PCC, he wrote and spoke on international affairs and pioneered television documentaries including a six-part series, Networks of Power (2012), about the world’s most influential cities and their power brokers. In an interview with the Guardian in 2012, he denied that he was only interested in powerful people, not ordinary lives. He responded in the characteristically robust way he dealt with lobby reporters. “A lot of powerful people are boring as shit,” he declared. He is survived by his second wife, Catherine (née Laylle), whom he married in 1997, and two sons, James and William, from his first marriage, to Françoise (nee Winskill), which ended in divorce . Christopher John Rome Meyer, diplomat, b. 22 Feb 1944. Died 27 Jul 2022